Nike passed on Steph Curry and lost big

Nike, like many others, passed on Steph Curry in 2013, and they are paying the price for their mistake. 

Steph Curry, many know, was not given much of a chance in the NBA. He wasn’t big enough, strong enough or athletic enough. He didn’t fit the NBA stereotype and therefore wouldn’t be able to cement his place in the NBA and probably wouldn’t make it. The same things were said of him before college. He got almost no offers because of his size and his lack of athleticism. Nike, along with so many other people, are realizing that mistakes were made.

According to ESPN’s Ethan Sherwood Strauss, Nike passed on Stephen Curry in 2013 because he was not a typical Nike athlete. The meeting between company and athlete reportedly featured a Nike rep not knowing how to pronounce Steph’s first name and a PowerPoint presentation that didn’t even bother removing the name of Kevin Durant from an earlier meeting.

Apparently, a typical Nike athlete is one that almost nobody can achieve. The body type of an NBA Nike athlete is Michael Jordan or LeBron James. An athlete that is 6’8”, 240 pounds is unachievable to most human beings. To say Michael Jordan and LeBron James are freak athletes is an understatement. Not Curry. This point guard, who is dominating the league, can barely dunk. He is not a super athlete that will dominate because of it. He is someone who put in the hard work every day, and it paid off for him.

Nike passed on Steph Curry because he is almost a regular human. Granted, not everyone can be Steph , but everyone can work as hard as Steph and get close. To even come close to LeBron James or Michael Jordan has as much to do with work ethic as it has to do with a physical blessing. And by Nike passing on the best player in the world, Nike is without an athlete that could earn Under Armour somewhere around $14 billion this year. You read that right, billion. Good work, Nike.

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